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  Danny suddenly thought of dirty cops who tailored evidence to the case, cops who hit a suspect until he signed whatever confession they wanted. Would he end up in jail? Getting the death penalty? It was just a prank!

  Detective Cooper seemed more or less reasonable, as well as Zoe Bentley. They were both looking at Detective Lonnie as if they were surprised by his outburst. Danny just had to keep his mouth shut until Janice or his attorney showed up. He turned to look at Detective Cooper.

  “I’m not saying another word until I get my phone call,” he said.

  “What the hell happened in there?” Jacob asked Mitchell furiously once they were out of the interrogation room. “I’ve seen rabid dogs act more sensibly than you! Of course he lawyered up! Even Mother Theresa would have asked for her attorney after your outburst!”

  “I know!” Mitchell spat back angrily. “I just couldn’t take it anymore! Have you ever heard such bullshit?”

  Jacob stuck his finger in Mitchell’s chest. “Yes!” he said. “Yes, I have! And so have you! People give us bullshit there every day. It’s the bullshit room, and we’re the number one bullshit consumers! That’s our job, to listen to bullshit, and then figure out what’s actual shit and what isn’t. Now here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go home, and sleep off whatever the hell it is you’re on. Stay away from this guy until you get it together, got it?”

  Mitchell thought he might punch Jacob, or just tell him to fuck off, but Zoe joined them. She gave him a look that made him feel like a three-year-old who’d had a temper tantrum because he didn’t want to eat his porridge. He turned around and walked away, furious.

  Damn Jacob. Who the hell did he think he was? As if he hadn’t lost his shit with that pedophile case they’d had a year and a half ago. Mitchell had had to pull him out of the room before he killed the suspect. So yeah, he got angry, made the suspect a bit defensive. Bernard and Hannah did it all the time in the interrogation room—good cop, bad cop. It got results every now and then, didn’t it?

  He barged into the squad room, banging the door against the wall, and sat down at his desk. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, but his mind felt hazy with rage. He had to calm down, had to think it through. He had never lost his temper like that before, and he knew very well it had nothing to do with the damn case. He needed to talk to Pauline, to understand what had happened. Maybe he could still fix this. He’d bought an engagement ring only a few weeks ago. This girl was the love of his life; he couldn’t let her go without a fight!

  “Hey, Mitchell, the word about the arrest is out,” Hannah told him from her own desk.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Check it out. I just sent you a link.”

  Mitchell opened the e-mail she’d sent, clicked on the link. It was the Glenmore Park Gazette. The headline read Police Arrest Suspect in Deadly Messenger Case. Mitchell read it through in disbelief. How had they heard already?

  There. One of the cops who’d arrested Danny Stevenson had actually talked to a reporter. Idiot. But who had tipped the reporter in the first place? He glanced at the reporter’s name. Ricky Nate. Yet again. The woman was a vulture. There it was, the rage again. He shut his eyes.

  Danny Stevenson was not the serial killer. Mitchell didn’t need Zoe to point it out. He’d known it as soon as he’d heard about the arrest. A bumbler caught with his chainsaw on the floor? Letting the victim contact the police, moving slowly enough to let them get there while his victim was still alive? Of course he wasn’t the deadly, careful serial killer. But was he telling the truth, or had he really been trying to kill his girlfriend?

  He’d said that he and his girlfriend pranked each other, that they were famous for it. Weird way to put it. He hadn’t said they were known for it, as if all their friends knew about it. He said they were famous.

  Mitchell was vaguely aware that pranks had infested the internet lately. You couldn’t go a day without someone sharing a video in which some guy pranked his friend, or mother, or sister. Watch how I convince my brother his dog died. Check it out as I run at random people in the street, dressed as a rubber chicken. Click this video, in which I tell my girlfriend I cheated on her. Hilarious.

  Mitchell began searching. He searched for “Funniest pranks.” Scanning the results, he decided “Funniest pranks USA” was better, as apparently Russians loved pranks. He watched dozens of mind-numbing videos. He found himself full of hatred toward the human race. This was what they’d become? A bunch of bipeds with a can of whipped cream and a condom full of water?

  He searched for “couple pranks English.” The third video he clicked hit home.

  Danny and Janice had a whole YouTube channel, with more than fifty video clips. In disbelief, Mitchell began to watch them.

  It all started with something completely random. Danny had put a huge amount of chili powder in Janice’s sandwich, and replaced her glass of water with vodka, filming the entire thing. Har har, the hilarity. Janice decided it was time for payback, and put tear gas in Danny’s deodorant spray. Then there was a prank with flour, and a prank with two dozen rubber spiders… they were all bland and badly filmed. The number of views wasn’t very high—several thousand, which in Mitchell’s opinion was several thousand more than they deserved.

  The first video that had gone viral was a prank in which Janice had somehow rigged Danny’s jogging shorts and underpants to tear while he was running. The viewers received several seconds of Danny’s bare butt, lightly pixelated, before he noticed anything was wrong. This video had more than half a million views. The following video had Danny pouring a bucket of freezing water into the shower as Janice was taking one. She barged out, screaming, again with some minimal pixels covering her privates. A million and a half views.

  They had become better at devising pranks in which nudity was involved. Mitchell suspected some of the pranks were staged. When they played a prank in which there was no nudity, the views dropped to less than a hundred thousand.

  As he went back to the video list, his heart dropped. A new video had been uploaded. He clicked it.

  By that point, the filming and editing was pretty professional. The video started with Danny explaining to the viewers what he was about to do. He was about to convince Janice he was The Deadly Messenger, and she was his next target. He showed the viewers the disguise, and the chainsaw. Then there was a shot of the bedroom. Janice walked in, wrapped in a towel. She picked up her phone and glanced at it. Then she froze and looked around.

  Mitchell paused the video and went back for a second or two. There. He paused the video again and stared at the screen. You could just see Janice’s mouth stretch a bit. A small smile. She knew it was a prank.

  The video went on. Danny moved in the apartment with a GoPro camera on his head, wielding a chainsaw. He entered the living room, where Janice sat in front of her computer. As he walked in, she looked up, and then clicked the mouse and nudged the laptop to face Danny.

  She did it incredibly fast; Mitchell wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t paying attention, because the next moment she was standing up, screaming. The towel fell from her body, which was once again pixelated. Maybe she actually had pixels where her nipples and privates were supposed to be. Mitchell was convinced she let the towel drop on purpose.

  Then the image froze, and switched to Janice—grinning, talking to her web camera. And she explained it all. How she instantly realized the chainsaw in Danny’s message was lying on his friend’s table. How she decided to prank him back, calling the police on him. How funny!

  Mitchell wondered if it had crossed her mind that the cops might shoot Danny in the heat of the moment. Probably wouldn’t have changed anything even if it did. She was too pleased with her clever prank to stop.

  Now the video went on, the laptop’s webcam filming the rest. Danny putting the mask on when Janice asked him to, her screaming for help, the cops barging in to arrest him. Then a final sequence where Janice’s friend answered Janice’s phone, and said Janice
was too traumatized to talk to the cops right now. No, of course the killer wasn’t her boyfriend, what sort of nonsense was that?

  Because, ha ha, it was even funnier if Danny was left to stew in jail for a couple of hours.

  Mitchell got up and walked to Hannah’s desk.

  “Want to join me on an arrest?” he said. “Jacob’s busy.”

  “Sure,” she said, standing up. “Who are we arresting?”

  “The most recent victim.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Captain Jack Marrow had been a captain for a very long time. Too long. He suspected this was due to the similarity of his full title to Disney’s favorite pirate captain. He was a walking pun.

  He believed he was a very good officer. He had done his job as captain of the patrol squad in Glenmore Park as well as one could. Frankly, he was ready to move on. For one, a rise in rank would stop Captain Bailey’s insistence on offering him grog, and saying “shiver me timbers” every damn time they met.

  When the serial killer’s case unfolded, Captain Marrow did his best to involve himself with it. His first big break had occurred when Tanessa Lonnie, who was under his command, had become bait for the serial killer. Captain Bailey had insisted Officer Lonnie and her detail should be under his supervision. Captain Marrow had flatly refused, demanding to be in charge of the sting operation since Tanessa Lonnie was one of his officers. The chief had sided with Marrow, and from that moment he’d had the pleasure of showing up at all meetings pertaining to the case and offering his advice.

  Now, to his endless joy, it appeared his own officers had arrested the serial killer. Not Captain Bailey’s slow-witted detectives, but Captain Marrow’s determined troops. He had nearly danced a victory jig in his office when he’d heard the news. He called his wife to inform her they were going out to celebrate that evening in a restaurant. No, not at Pierrot’s, did she think he was made of money? They could go out to eat simple steak and fries; there was no better way to celebrate. He then called Tanessa Lonnie to inform her the sting operation was over, they had caught their man. He contacted Tanessa’s security detail as well, to spread the good news.

  Two hours later, the chief called and asked him to come over to her office. As he was walking over, he tried to think of the best way to explain humbly that his officers had merely done their job as he himself had taught them. He entered her office, where Fred Bailey was already sitting, a look of disappointment on his face. Captain Marrow did his best to hide his victorious smile as he sat by Bailey, who for once did not call him “Matey.”

  The chief began filling Marrow in. They hadn’t arrested the serial killer; they had arrested a prankster. There was a video of one of his cops shaking the suspect violently while he was already in cuffs. The press had already notified the public that a suspect had been arrested, apparently quoting one of Marrow’s own moronic cops.

  Captain Marrow didn’t need to try and hide his smile any longer. There was no smile to hide.

  They had to begin with some damage control. Captain Bailey would organize a press conference. This was not a complete disaster. After all, the prankster should have known better, and it was safe to believe public opinion would favor the police. And they still had the ongoing sting operation. Hopefully, the killer would take the bait soon. The forensic psychologist was quite sure he would try to kill again within a day or two. In fact, the news of this arrest might prompt the killer to act faster.

  Captain Marrow had once gone on a roller coaster called The Plunge, to disastrous results. The feeling in his gut on that terrible day did not even come close to what he experienced at the moment when the chief mentioned the sting operation.

  Could the chief hang on for a second? he asked. He just had to make an urgent phone call. Or two.

  It was a busy day in the Glenmore Park police dispatch center. It had started in the morning, with the phone call from the Arlington Police dispatcher, who said a woman from Glenmore Park had contacted him and said someone was about to kill her. This quickly led to the arrest of the suspected serial killer. Half an hour later there had been a sewage spill downtown, which led to dozens of furious calls. The dispatchers had a hard time explaining the concept of “emergency” to the angry citizens who wanted someone to come and get the shit off their lawn immediately.

  Then, at some point, a rumor had begun to show its face. The rumor was that one of the dispatchers had been bribed by a reporter named Ricky Nate. Allegedly, this dispatcher contacted Ricky Nate every time a serious call regarding the serial killer reached the center. There was talk about an investigation by internal affairs. There were numerous guesses about the dispatcher’s identity. These guesses didn’t really revolve around the moral capacity of this or that dispatcher, and instead were mostly based upon old grudges. Certain dispatchers who for some reason were never available for shifts on Christmas Eve were suddenly under a lot of scrutiny by their peers.

  At three p.m., Detective Mitchell Lonnie arrested Janice Hewitt for giving false testimony to the police and obstructing justice. The first thing Janice did once she’d been arrested was demand her phone call. No one knew who she called, but it wasn’t her attorney.

  Half an hour after Janice made the call, all hell broke loose. Dispatch began receiving hundreds of calls. Some were angry fans of the pranking couple, who demanded that the innocent couple be released at once, so their hilarious shenanigans could carry on. Some were crank calls: complaints of robbers armed with bananas, giraffes sighted running around the city, dark gritty voices threatening to shoot the moon with laser beams. These were probably the couple’s pranking buddies, dropping everything to come to their friends’ assistance. One caller wanted to report a murder. When asked who the victim was, he answered “free speech.” It was safe to assume he was very pleased with himself.

  While this was unfolding, an investigator from internal affairs showed up. He “just wanted to look around.”

  The atmosphere was becoming quite tense.

  It was no wonder, then, that when one of the monitors displayed a new message sent to Tanessa’s phone, no one noticed it at first. When one of the dispatchers finally glanced at it, seven minutes later, events were already underway.

  Tanessa was surprised by how relieved she felt when Captain Marrow called to tell her the killer had been arrested, and their sting operation was no longer needed. She didn’t really realize how tense she’d been for the past week and a half, until all of a sudden she could unwind. She was embarrassed when a small tear materialized in her left eye. She quickly wiped it and turned to George, who was making a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace, phlox, and cosmos.

  “Hey, George?” she said, her voice wavering a bit uncertainly.

  “Yeah?” he said, his brow furrowed like it always was when he was trying to get a bouquet just right.

  “I’m uh… done. I mean, I’m not coming back tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” he said, raising his eyes to look at her. “Really? That’s a shame. I was getting used to having you around.”

  They smiled at each other. Once again, she wondered how much he really knew.

  “I really enjoyed working with you,” she said.

  “Likewise. I think you have a great eye for flowers,” he said. “Though, frankly, the way you use the pruning shears makes me want to take cover.”

  “I think I’ll still end my shift, if that’s okay,” she said. She realized she was reluctant to leave this man too abruptly. He was a bit strange, but over the last few days they had bonded a bit over tales about his travels in the far east, and over her stories about her childhood.

  “Sure. We can even grab a cup of coffee afterward, if you want,” he suggested.

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  A few hours later, a man entered the store in a great state of agitation, and asked for their largest bouquet. Tanessa suspected this was a man who had been caught cheating. He was biting his nails constantly, glancing at his phone, and once he let out a small moan
as if suddenly remembering that his life was on the brink. Tanessa finally provided a bouquet which appeared to satisfy him, and he paid and left. She noticed that her phone, which was sitting on the counter, was blinking. She tapped it, and glanced at the message.

  It was from an unknown number, and there was no text. It was an image of a samurai sword, leaning against a wall under a window through which Glenmore Park’s vista could be seen.

  Tanessa tried to understand what she was seeing. Realization came fast. They hadn’t caught the killer; he was still roaming free. This was a text from him. Her security detail was gone. She was all alone, her only defense a small 9 mm Smith and Wesson in her purse, which was in the back room. She turned to go get it, and the store’s front door opened.

  The man who walked in was wide-shouldered, and pale. He had thick blond hair and wore gray sunglasses. Her mind matched his face and hair almost immediately to one of the sketches they had.

  It was him. He had taken the bait. He had come to kill her.

  He marched forward, a bit too quickly to be a casual customer. Tanessa saw that one hand was shoved into his pocket, but the other was hiding something behind his back. And then, before she even had time to process it all, he stopped in his tracks and swung his arm forward.

  If she hadn’t recognized him from the sketch, if she had hesitated for a millisecond, it would have been too late. The sword swung toward her neck with breathtaking speed, but Tanessa was already moving, her hands shoving her body away from the counter, her head tossed back. She would have sworn she could feel a small breeze as the sword missed her throat by no more than a hair. The blade kept moving, creating a perfect arc in the air. Unbalanced by her sudden movement, Tanessa lost her footing and crashed backward, her hip hitting a low shelf behind her, pain blooming in her side.